Employment History

Company

Tenure

Role

Falcom

1986 - 1987

Composer, Sound Designer

Ancient

1991 -

Co-Founder, Composer

Ancient

2000 -

President

Brief Profile

Having been passionate about Arcade games and music as a teenager, Yuzo Koshiro started to submit PSG-generated original compositions to a gaming magazine. He was recruited as a composer and sound designer at Nihon Falcom in 1986 and subsequently offered landmark melodic scores to Xanadu Scenario II, Romancia, Legacy of the Wizard, Ys I, Ys II, and Sorcerian for early computers. He left the company to become a freelancer after learning he would receive no credit or royalties for his extensively reused compositions. He eventually made popular breakthroughs with scores to The Revenge of Shinobi, Misty Blue, and ActRaiser.

Koshiro later worked on productions by his mother's company Ancient. He offered an accomplished Game Gear port of Sonic the Hedgehog's music, groovy techno scores to the Streets of Rage series, and a modernist orchestral score to Eternal Oasis. For the Saturn and Dreamcast, Koshiro worked closely with Ancient on projects like Legend of Oasis, Vatlva, and Card Captor Sakura, but few were commercially. Furthermore, the project Streets of Rage IV was cancelled several after he directed some demos. He engaged in independent works during this lull such as Culdcept, Shenmue, and Zork I: The Great Underground Empire.

As the current president of Ancient, Koshiro has overseen and scored their recent titles Car Battler Joe, Ueki no Housoku, Amazing Island, and Hitman Reborn. He has also engaged in high profile works like the trance soundtracks to the Wangan Midnight series, the orchestral concerts of Thomas Boecker, and several collaborative tribute projects. He has recently enjoyed a surge of popularity thanks to his retrospective FM synth scores to the Etrian Odyssey series. He remains undoubtedly one of the most influential, versatile, and creative game composers of all time and will be forever known for 'doing so much with so little'.